World's Unluckiest Traveler is back home in Ventura, and ready to travel again

LEFT: After a horrible accident far from home, Ventura doctor Gary Feldman's daughters encouraged him to enter a national contest for the title of The World's Unluckiest Traveler. He won. Now, he only hopes his body will heal so he can use the $10,000 dream vacation grand prize.
Photo courtesy of the Feldman family

He is the World's Unluckiest Traveler and he lives right here in Ventura County.

Dr. Gary Feldman, a 68-year-old Ventura pediatrician and geneticist, is the holder of this dubious honor and, more positively, the accompanying $10,000 dream vacation prize. Feldman received the designation in January as part of a nationwide contest sponsored by Travel Guard, a travel insurance company.

But this is one contest nobody really wants to win.

Feldman is now 17 months into a challenging recovery from a horrible accident he suffered away from home far away from home. He is still barely able to walk. Ironically, he was on his way to do something good for the world when it happened.

This wasn't Feldman's first medical mission. He had completed more than 30 previous missions with other physicians who volunteer their time to help children. It is something he truly loves. This time he was scheduled to join a group of physicians in Vietnam who would perform reconstructive surgery on more than 100 children in a two-week period. Kids who had suffered devastating burns children who were born with disfiguring congenital defects. That was the reason for this trip.

But this time he was unlucky.

He and his wife, Ada, left Ventura County two weeks early to do some sightseeing before the physicians convened. While being taken on a drive through the spectacular scenery of remote northern Vietnam, he asked the driver to pull over so he could take a photograph. It was while he was perched on that cliff that the ground gave way. It was 300 feet to the bottom of the canyon.

Had it not been for the ledge 30 feet below him, you'd have read about Dr. Feldman in the obituary page instead of here in the travel section. That ledge broke his fall, but it also broke his leg, and left it in an excruciatingly painful contortion.

Being a physician, he knew immediately the seriousness of his plight. Feldman was literally in the middle of nowhere, but he felt fortunate to at least be conscious so he could direct his rescue. His driver hailed enough passing motorists on the lonely road to somehow drag him back up to the top of the hill. It took eight or 10 of them to do it. As Feldman puts it, "I'm a big man and they aren't." He instructed one helper with a working cell phone to request three things quickly: a splint a litter and morphine.

The "ambulance" that eventually arrived was a pickup truck with a shell, and in it Feldman endured a 14-hour ride to an airport in Hanoi where a medical evacuation jet was waiting to take him to a hospital in Bangkok. There, in a hospital so modern that "it would put many in the United States to shame," Feldman underwent two surgeries on his leg.

But The World's Unluckiest Traveler's woes didn't end there. A post-surgical infection complicated his recovery, resulting in six more surgeries since returning to the United States. Due to infection in the bone, the leg didn't want to mend. Only now, 17 months after the fall, is he in a walking boot and hopeful that he is finally on his way to returning to some normalcy in his life.

So how does one keep their spirits up during such a long convalescence? Feldman's two adult daughters, Gabrielle and Carmia, came to the rescue. As Gabrielle Feldman told me, "It had been a really tough year for him. Nobody was sure if he' be able to walk again or even keep his leg. We heard about this contest and decided it would be a great distraction for him."

The daughters helped write his story for the application and had a photo taken of their dad in his wheelchair proudly displaying his X-rays. Then they marshaled all of their friends and their parents' friends to vote for him. He ended up with over 4,000 voters insisting Feldman truly was the World's Unluckiest Traveler.

So how is the contest winner going to use the grand prize of a $10,000 dream vacation? His grandson's bar mitzvah will be in Israel in December. Being able to be there would be a dream come true.

Oh, and Feldman is definitely heading off on another medical mission just as soon as he possibly can.